Golden Mane Slot
Golden Mane is a horsey-themed 5-reel, 10-pay line online slots game from NextGen Gaming. You may be forgiven for thinking that as this is a horse-themed slot, and gambling is involved, then surely the most appropriate theme here is for a horse racing slot? There are certainly plenty of horse-racing themed slots around (Think Frankie Dettori's Magic Seven by Playtech) but Golden Mane is something else. Think 'Black Beauty' or 'Follyfoot' or any of the other dozens of horse-related fictional narratives. 'Golden Mane' appears to be a golden-coloured horse who appears on the reels with her horsey friends, a white horse and a black stallion. Lots of horsing around ensues, we assume, as the three horsey buddies caper around an autumn-inspired background, without a jockey in sight.
Joining Golden and her inky beau on the reels is a small mountain range, a horseshoe and a golden-leafed tree. Also featured are the omnipotent playing card symbols nine through to ace. There are ten lines in this slot and that's a fixed number. For some odd reason it costs one and a half coins per line to play this slot, so whatever coin size you choose (and you can select any coin size from 0.01 to 10.00) is multiplied by fifteen when you spin. When you're ready to jump over a few fences, hit the spin button.
Payout & bonus rounds
Payouts commence at two coins for two of the white horse herself (we're assuming she's a female) on a winning pay line. She's also the top payout as well in her 'Wild' configuration – five of her will win you one and a half thousand coins.
As just mentioned, a portrait of Golden Mane acts as the wild symbol in this game. She substitutes for all other symbols aside from the scatter symbol.
A horseshow is the scatter symbol here and you only have to land two of them anywhere on the reels to win a cash payout and free spins. The scatter symbol only appears on the central three reels though. If you land two scatters you win two free games, but if you land three you win six. There are additional wilds added to the reels during free spins. On the first free spin onwards the wild replaces the 'white horse' symbol, then on the second spin the 'black horse' symbol is also replaced by a wild. This happens again on the third free game ('mountain' symbol) and the fourth ('tree' symbol). By the fourth free spin every non-playing card or scatter symbol is a wild! You can re-trigger free spins during your freebies.
There's also the 'scatter run' feature in this slot. This can occur randomly on any spin – scatter symbols are added to reels two, three and four to increase your chances of triggering free spins.
You might be forgiven for thinking this online slots game was created about a decade ago rather than in 2017, as it is really old-fashioned, both in looks and in gameplay. This is a slot that's definitely only for those who love simple slots, and horses!